


Warming

by lemonsharks



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act II, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship/Love, Platonic Kissing, Post-All That Remains, breaking and entering means "I care", magical birth control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 07:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3480101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isabela gives Hawke a plant. A very important plant.  (The kind of plant every woman learns early how to find and nurture and keep from dying on a ship in the middle of the Amaranthine ocean, if she knows what’s good for her, and Isabela does.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warming

It is the third hour of the morning and Isabela's up prowling Hightown. 

No, in third hour of the morning, Marian has gone not to the bed but to the kitchen. She crouches into a fighting stance at the first off-kilter creak of a floorboard, the first curse from the cellar. The cook's knife in her hand is nothing like the sword she wishes she had and the absence of a shield at her back is like nudity. 

The second curse she recognizes. Closes her eyes. Puts the knife down. 

_I am going to kill her. With my hands._

She pulls the cellar door open with the crack of wood on wood, steps backward into the kitchen so Isabela can come up, her arms full of—

A potted plant.

"You have a _key_ ," Hawke says. 

"My hands were full."

"Because stealing into my house by dark of night is how you say 'I care'."

"Is that _any_ way to talk to someone who's brought you a gift? Besides, there was absolutely no stealing involved this time around. I know you don't approve—spoilsport."

Isabela sets the plant down on the worktable, and very deliberately does not wobble at all, when she swings around to find the liquor cabinet all too quickly. Hawke takes a breath; the plant is in full flower, a very distinctive yellow, with a thick stalk and pointed leaves. It practically vibrates with botanical health. 

The plant pricks a memory, and she keeps it in the corner of her eye. 

Her friend returns with two chipped cups Hawke cannot, after three years in Lowtown, bring herself to throw away. This isn't a night for crystal, and the very old brandy someone lost in the brush along the Wounded Coast tastes just as good here as it would in a very expensive gold-leafed snifter with poorer company. 

"Do you know what this is?" Isabela says, pouring for them both. Before Hawke can reply, she continues, "Damned hard to find outside of Antiva—"

"It grows wild near Lothering, actually."

"Oh, _well_ , then."

"Mother took Bethany and me aside when we—" she shrugs, and rubs a leaf between her fingers. Sap clings to her skin, and she remembers how miserable she'd been that day, out hunting _vegetables_ when all she wanted was to be curled up in bed til her insides stopped hurting, to tell her sister to _stop talking_ , and she could _smell_ the yellow and summer-crisp grass. Leandra had been so _pleased_ , her little girl a woman, and the ghost of her smile doesn’t hurt so much tonight as it… had. Since.

"I know _exactly_ what this is for," Hawke says, taking a cup and a long swallow.

"Good," Isabela says, smirking, raising her own cup, eyes slyly on the ceiling for a bare second. The kitchen is underneath Hawke's bedroom, and Isabela knows it well. Then, " _I'm_ against babies in principle, but I can promise I won't get any of yours into _too_ much trouble."

"You're _already_ too much trouble," Hawke replies, bumping shoulders. She wonders, what she might have lost by not-pushing. Knows what she gained and thinks it, at the very least, a fair trade. 

Isabela leans down and presses a short, dry kiss to her collar, where Hawke's dressing gown has fallen open. A bit of liquor sloshes over onto the back of her hand, and she draws back to lick it away. 

"To the two of you colossal fools," the pirate says, "and to good timing."

Hawke knocks the rim of her cup into Isabela's, and a piece comes loose, breaks off, and falls to the ground at their feet. She drinks anyway, with a smile on her lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Laserwort](http://www.damninteresting.com/the-birth-control-of-yesteryear/) aka silphium was so effective as birth control we drove it into extinction. Good job there, past-us. Good job.


End file.
